Distractions of Oyo irritants

Sometimes, you cannot but pity ordinary Nigerian people. Due to the progressive worsening of their affairs over the years, especially at the governmental level, they are, most often than not, easy preys to demagogic adulations and selfish analyses. Because they are perceived to have faint memory, ability to deploy rigour in the estimation of political salesmen who canvass tendentious issues, is seldom put to play. This makes the landscape brim with charlatans who brow-beat us all with uncritical submissions that we cannot or fail to interrogate. I reckon that if such salesmen are abreast of our ability to deploy critical thinking, mental rigour and then shuttle into yesterday in coming to conclusions about issues they bring to our attention, they would be frightened off the peremptory ways they take us for granted.

Mr. Dele Adigun has traversed very sensitive and highly-rated offices in Oyo State that qualify him to be rated an emeritus. He has been Director in the civil service, Permanent Secretary, commissioner and Secretary to the State Government. In saner climes, he should be a depository of knowledge and government after government should scramble to drink from his brook of wisdom. His contemporary in the state is, highly respected Alhaji Diti Oladapo. Any government Oladapo loans a piece of advice has struck gold; the one that waffles loses life-long investment.

But Adigun is a politician. Upon retirement from the service, he has, like a restless troubadour, walked through the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), serving both political leaders like Rasidi Ladoja and Adebayo Alao-Akala. At the expiration of the governments of both, Adigun made spirited but failed attempts to berth at the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and eventually landed at the Accord Party (AP). It is common knowledge in Oyo State that the ex-civil servant is preening himself for the gubernatorial ticket of Ladoja’s AP and as such his restless and hyper vigor to be seen as the most recent people’s ombudsman.

Of recent, Adigun’s penchant for intervening in issues of governance has reached a crescendo. One thread that runs through his pieces is the state of accumulated rot, literally and metaphorically, in Oyo State, which he acknowledges are massive and accumulated. The question to ask is, Adigun, having been at the front-burner of governments in the last decade, how implicated is he in this decadence? Has he adequately explained his Ibadan channelization project during the Chinyere Nwosu era? Could it be mischief or naivety that he would denigrate a government that has chosen as its credo, infrastructural renewal of this accumulated rot, a government which is undertaking more road rehabilitation projects than all the governments Adigun served combined? Is it the touted gubernatorial ambition of this former PS that has jaundiced his reasoning or, ab-initio, he is a case of over-celebrated nothingness that has deposited the previous Oyo State in its valley of hopelessness?

A case in point is his “Distractions in governance, perfidy in Oyo State”, which bears striking Siamese resemblance to an earlier piece entitled “Disconnect in Oyo’s N50b bond”. Riddled with vain and incongruous self-glorification and what 19th century British writer, Oscar Wilde, in his De Profundis, called violence of opinion and epileptic fury, the piece lacks the sophistication of the office Adigun occupied.

First, he used the occasion of the piece to justify his gaffe of not being able to distinguish between a bond and a loan. His error of mind was justified by his reference to ex-Osun governor, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, as having collected a bond from the market. Which is a mis-match. Does anyone have to be a finance expert to know that, all over the world, loans in themselves are not evil but their deployment? Great economies of the world are run on loans and bonds. The tragedy of borrowing is using short-term loans to finance long-term projects. Oyo State government is not implicated in this financial malfeasance.

My allegation of naivety or mischief, or both, on the part of Adigun runs thus: First, the Oyo government, in building a five-star hotel at Mokola, is doing that in partnership with an investor. Adigun has accused government of wastage of the bond fund on hotel. Can he pretend not to be abreast of the prevailing discourse and situation?

Adigun wonders why government must build a housing estate. His argument falls under the inductive argumentative pitfall. Its analogy runs thus: Because a particular cookie is green and tasty, all green cookies are tasty. Because Lam Adesina and Ladoja, according to him, embarked on barren housing ventures, Ajimobi’s too would be barren. Even sophomore students of logic know that this is vacuous, tendentious and hyper epistemic. However, Ajimobi’s housing estates are conceived as a PPP and funds for the infrastructure on those estates, meant to be provided by government, are the ones built into the bond. Could it be that Adigun’s theorizations are anemic of facts or he is merely embarking on a high-wire manipulation to earn the adulation of his co-travelers on this travel? The same suffices for his denunciation of the circular road which he claimed he and Ladoja conceived, before his decamping to Alao-Akala’s side. This is being conceived as a PPP.

Adigun doesn’t want Oyo government to build silos. His reasoning is that it is ‘puerile and infantile, which is amusing. Government did its research and discovered that in Oyo, the problem is not about agricultural production but wastage of produce during the season. The research confirmed that close to 70% of production during the year is wasted due to lack of storage. Government thus decided to arrest this wastage by constructing silos. This is in concert with the enhanced supply of farm inputs and the introduction of YES-O agriculture extension cadets from the state’s youth empowerment scheme. If the state expects more agriculture production because of these initiatives, it is imperative to address the problem of storage that has led to wastage in the past.

I became a subject of Adigun’s misguided venom thereafter. Rather than reply him, however, I take his vituperation as my own modest recompense in the quest to make Oyo better.

It is no wonder that Adigun has an aversion for the intellect. The governors he served were embarrassments to their minders in the public. In Oyo at the moment, we have a reversal of this seemingly intangible but significant milestone. Omololu Olunloyo makes peremptory reference to this. After him and Bola Ige, he says matter-of-factly, none of the governors who ruled Oyo State ever went to proper school until now. This reflects in the way outsiders view an indigene of the state. They believe that Tokyo or Auxiliary, breeds of governments that Adigun served, are the signposts of the knowledge base of Oyo State.

In rebranding Oyo as the place to be, we needed to tell the world that infrastructural renewal and a knowledgeable man at the driver’s seat are not mutually exclusive. Aside constructing over 200 roads, far more than Ladoja and Alao-Akala ever did combined, dualizing about seven roads in the state, building a fly-over, the last time this was done being 30 years ago, rehabilitating schools, some of whose pupils, until of recent, sat with chairs provided by the Bola Ige government, there is also the need for the public to have the feel that the Adigun-type governors have been incinerated in Oyo State.

Adigun dwelled extensively on cants and sophistries. While in one breath acknowledging that there are so many construction projects ongoing in Oyo State as reflected in “inefficiency in project management” which he said had bred traffic chaos, he, in another breath, said nothing was being done in the state. The truth of our state at the moment is that the Adiguns, for more than a decade now, abetted the progressive decay of Oyo State and Ajimobi is unlucky to be the recipient of the residue of a state they brought to dilapidated state. No foundation did he meet but rot and a once glowing past. No template for good governance but mementos of bar room politics, otherwise known as amala politics and governmental heist. Unmaintained bridges are falling; un-swept dirt are mounting; haphazardly done roads are giving way and the more Ajimobi tries, the more the ridges of ineptitude of the Adigun years show their lacunae.

But like a matador that he is, Ajimobi’s lingo is, backward to the Adigun years never, forward to the new Oyo State ever!